Andrew Stanton's 3D sci-fi epic John Carter hit $30.6 million in its North American debut thanks to an uptick on Saturday, while the film opened internationally to $70.6 million for a total $101.2 million.

Disney is under no illusions that it's out of the woods financially despite a slightly bettter-than-hoped for global performance. John Carter cost $250 million to produce plus a marketing spend that puts the total pricetag well north of $300 million and probably closer to $350 million. ...

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I think John Carter is getting a bum rap. It really is entertaining, in a big, silly way. It is better than any of the Star Wars prequels (1, 2, or 3), and I think more fun than Avatar. Perhaps that is a low bar, but there is much to enjoy about this film. The Disney marketing people all need to be fired--they really botched this release.

You can't blame marketing when you have a film that, on its face, you honestly can't answer the question, "BUT WHAT IS IT???" Marketing can only do so much. At the end of the day, the studio took the risk to attempt to introduce a concept that, for all intents and purposes, does not even have a good logline. General audiences (who, BTW, don't give a crap about Edgar Rice or even know how the hell his books contributed to storytelling) have to decide why they should plop $50 down for a night out at the movies. Marketing can't solve that one - the filmmakers, that is, the studio and directors, by all accounts, failed to perform this task.

Actually you can blame marketing when fan-made trailers were far superior to the actual trailers created by Disney. They have a long history of screwing up film marketing in the same way Warners does for family films (anyone remember what they did for Iron Giant?)That's why so many studios actually use outside marketing firms to help their product. The inside marketing divisions tend to be filled with nephews and friends of the other execs and not with people that know what they're doing.If you examine audience reaction on the internet to this film it's pretty clear that reaction is overwhelmingly positive once you get those butts into the seats. And that's Marketing's job.On a positive note this sure has made Nikki Finke happy. She's been waiting for something resembling a Pixar bomb for a long time. It's not exactly a Pixar film, but it's close enough for her.

There is just nothing new going on in the film that justifies $250 million. The director was unable to deliver the goods, and the studio was too blind to see that the goods weren't there. Which OFTEN happens when enormous piles of money are involved.

And still hanging in there "The Secret World of Arrietty" is up to $17,155,268 as of Thursday March 8 (Box Office Mojo doesn't have the Friday or Saturday numbers posted yet for Arrietty).

That adds to Arrietty's worldwide box-office total to date of $143,523,352 .

The fact that it only cost a relatively modest $23 million (U.S.) to produce makes that $143,523,352 number all the sweeter.

At this point the hand-drawn Arrietty has done spectacularly well in the worldwide market and not bad at all for an anime film theatrical release in North America (it is the strongest performance yet for one of the Disney-released Studio Ghibli films) .

John Carter is certainly not one of the worst films I've ever seen, or even of the past few years (that honor would probably go to the almost completely unwatchable Red Tails). It is a big, fun, action romance. And that is what they should have pushed it as--a big, fun action romance, with tons of amazing creatures. And those creatures were completely believable. Original, no. But how many Hollywood blockbusters are in any way original? Very, very few. Certainly this is a much better film than the ghastly Transformers films--and those are huge blockbusters. No, the problem is not mostly the film. It is the marketers. First, they destroyed the title by removing "of Mars" from it. John Carter has to have the most boring title ever created by marketers. This is a film that needs to admit it is old fashioned sci fi, like Flash Gordon or Buck Rogers or Star Wars. And trying to hide that fact left audiences totally wondering. Even when the marketing team knew there was something wrong, what did they do? They released a scene from the beginning of the film that had no fantastic elements--a scene that made the film look like a western! And in an era when nobody goes to see Westerns. They should have shown the scene where John Carter learns how to move on Mars, which was entirely funny and entertaining. Or the scene with John Carter meeting the green Tharks. Something to make fanboys want to go see it. After all, the fanboys now rule opening weekends.

The good news is that whoever Disney hired to do the marketing overseas seemed to have done a better job than the cretins Disney employs at their own studio in the US.Overseas numbers seem to be doing pretty well and the US numbers aren't as bad as Nikki Finke is making them out to be.

I watched the 2D version of JOHN CARTER yesterday in a 3/4 full theater. I thought it did a good job adapting nearly 100-year old source material, and the film was good enough to keep my attention despite the shrieks and squeals from the baby in the theater.

2nd place and only 30M BO and still beat by a film that costs 75% less to make. What went wrong, I can't imagine the Stanton film could have been that bad. Didn't he use the Pixar brain trust team for advice?

What went wrong, I can't imagine the Stanton film could have been that bad.

It's not. If you have not yet seen it, I strongly recommend watching the 2D version in a theater. JOHN CARTER is a good film.

However, IRON GIANT proved that it's not enough to be a good film to succeed at the box office. And Michael Bay's TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN proves that you don't have to have a good film to succeed.

Do you know how the Oscars work, they are not as bad as the purchased Golden Globes but they don't mean much to the general public.

Don't get me wrong the look of Rango was great, just too strange of a movie for general audiences. And Paramount screwed up because they tried promoting it first as a kids film which it wasn't. But it was nice to see something different and fresh.